Long subordinate to global economic governance, global environmental governance currently fails to produce responses that match the urgency and depth of global environmental challenges, as well as being short on justice and democracy. Environmental political theory can speak to this condition though the critique of the deficiencies of governance, scrutiny of reform proposals, and development of dynamic criteria to seek in improved governance. At issue here are not just institutions generally (...) recognized as environmental, but the system of global governance in its entirety. In the Anthropocene, ecosystemic reflexivity can be recognized as properly the first virtue of global environmental governance. (shrink)

On one day in 2009, in 38 countries around the world, 4,000 ordinary citizens gathered to discuss the future of climate policy. This project, 'WWViews', was the first-ever global democratic deliberation - an attempt to enable normal people to reach informed decisions on and impact the global policy process.This book, written by the international practitioners and scholars who facilitated the project, analyses the experiences and lessons from this ground-breaking event. Despite the apparent success of the individual deliberations, the (...) recommendations had little impact within the media or the policy process at Copenhagen. The authors examine these successes and failures, and the challenges and opportunities of such deliberative events. Through this they explore important themes for participatory approaches from the local to the global: the role of deliberation within global governance; methodology and practice; participant selection; policy impacts; engaging the media; how policy culture affects deliberation uptake; capacity building and knowledge transfer; process evaluation; content and argumentation analysis; and gender, race and class aspects.The global aims of the WWViews project, along with the opportunity to evaluate the same process in different national and cultural contexts, makes this a hugely valuable and informative study for all those interested in democratic deliberation and environmental governance from the small to the international scale. (shrink)

An increasingly complex governance architecture has become a major characteristic of current global environmental governance, often resulting in different degrees of complexity and fragmentation within global environmental regimes. Social learning processes are introduced by scholars and policy makers alike as management approaches for governing complex dynamic systems in situations that feature a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. Scholars argue that actors in complex environmental issue areas can learn in their social context and (...) could develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes and behaviour to enhance their capacity to effectively address the environmental problem. This is where this article picks up the discussion and assesses the impact of a regime's complexity on its learning capabilities. It further identifies major drivers and barriers of regime learning processes in international environmental regimes. (shrink)

Glocal environmental governance lags behind the science regarding the seriousness of the combined environmental and developmental challenges. Governance regimes have developed differently in different issue areas and are often inconsistent and contradictory; furthermore governance innovations in each area lead to new challenges. The combined effect of issue-based, plural, and fragmented governance raises key normative questions in environmental governance. Hence, this overview paper aims to address the following questions: How can the global (...) community move towards a more normatively consistent global architecture for sustainable development? In order to address this question, I first examine the key normative issues and the nature of governance in the area of climate change, water and forests. In doing so I also look at the implications of each for food production, safety and security. The paper concludes that there are strong normative and architectural inconsistencies between the fragmented and plural issue-specific regimes; that such inconsistencies are inevitable in an ‘anarchic’ international order; that some degree of normative coherence can be strived at through the adoption of global constitutionalism and rule of law; and that the present discussion on global sustainable development goals is a first step towards creating a normatively consistent global architecture for sustainable development. (shrink)

Over the last several years, the environmental regulatory system has undergone radical changes. Various private normative schemes, ranging from corporate codes to environmental management systems, environmental reporting standards, project-finance codes and green indexes, have assumed an increasingly important role in the regulatory arena. The emergence of private environmental governance as an important transnational phenomenon raises two interrelated puzzles: efficacy and legitimacy. Underlying the efficacy puzzle is a deep-seated suspicion toward "soft" legal instruments, which to some (...) observers represent nothing but a coordinated form of "greenwash." The legitimacy question reflects a contrary concern — that these private regulatory structures represent new forms of global authority that are in need of distinctive legitimization. The Article begins with an outline of this new global terrain, exploring its historical evolution. It argues that the multiple links and cross-sensitivities between the different global private regimes have created a novel ensemble regulatory structure with positive enforcement and normative externalities. The Article then moves to examine the question of efficacy more generally, developing a nuanced understanding of the social dynamic of "soft-law" regulation, which rejects the binary logic underlying the "soft law"-"greenwash" narratives. Regarding the political dimension, the Article argues that this new ensemble network has brought about a new transnational political sphere which is associated with an extensive, cross-institutional quest for legitimacy. The Article then turns its focus to the field of sustainability indexes, focusing on the two leading global indexes: FTSE4Good Index Series and Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. These indexes are taken as a prototypical case of transnational private ordering. Drawing on a close analysis of the indexes’ guiding documents and on interviews with senior executives from both organizations, the Article considers the unique features of these indexes as forms of governance and the paths through which they claim to affect society. It then moves to explore the mechanisms of legitimacy employed by FTSE4Good and DJSI, highlighting their distinctive visions of legitimization. A close examination of sustainability indexes generates insights, I will argue, regarding the field of private global environmental governance as a whole. In particular, it highlights both the new political opportunities created by the evolving network of transnational governance and the limits this new structure sets for radical critique. (shrink)

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of corporateassociation- and standards-based forms of environmental selfregulation. Private environmental governance is commonly presented as being a market-driven phenomenon. Firms seek to manage their environmental impacts as a means of achieving cost-based or differentiation-based advantages. Yet, these innovations are necessarily embedded in the regulatory policies and institutions of nation states and thus subject to the dynamics of regulatory change. Historically, economic crises have stimulated significant regulatory changes that have, (...) more often than not, resulted in an expansion of public regulation and a diminution of self-regulation. This Article considers the ramifications of the global financial crisis for the development of private environmental governance. (shrink)

Economists interpret global environmental quality to be a pure public good. Each country should contribute to its provision. However, this is hard to achieve because each government is tempted to take a free ride on the other governments' efforts. Not only has this dilemma been analysed with game theoretical methods but game theory has also been used to think about how to make amends. This paper reviews the game theoretical discussion on how international policy frameworks may be designed (...) to improve the chances for international cooperation. It is also shown that the evaluation of alternative environmental policy instruments deviates from the standard environmental economics model if applied to the international arena. For the benefit of an interdisciplinary readership, the evolution of the debate on global environmental policy is related to the recent history of economic thought. This history is taken to be materialised in the writings of economics' Nobel Prize laureates. (shrink)

Aspirations for global justice have, in the last two decades, found their most radical expressions in the context of global environmental governance and climate change. From Rio de Janeiro through Kyoto to Copenhagen, demands for international distributional justice, and especially North–South equity, have become a prominent aspect of international environmental negotiation. However, claims for international environmental and climate justice have generally been deployed in the form of instinctive gut reaction than as a closely argued (...) concept. In this paper, I outline the ways in which issues of international justice intertwine with notions of global environmental sustainability and the basic premises on which claims for North–South equity are entrenched. (shrink)

In this article I examine contemporary accounts of global justice theory (which I designate as domestic and institutional) and how they are implemented in order to formulate notions of global environmental justice. I underscore how these accounts are limited in their ability to provide thick conceptions of environmental justice, mainly because they fail to provide promising alternative visions of global politics that can substantially combat the injustices and inequalities that are currently so popular in neoliberal (...) environmental governance. I argue that perspectives and theoretical tools from postcolonial theory can, however, help us to begin rethinking what the phrase “environmental justice” should mean. (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, two parallel developments took place in global governance: fragmentation in social/environmental legislations across countries, and an increasing uniformity (or 'globalisation') of economic/financial legislations. In the liberal democratic context of global governance, both of these developments are embodied in partnerships for sustainable development. Studying these partnerships in the context of private environmental governance and tracing the origin of the concept in business and law, can reveal the implications (...) of 'privatisation of governance' on sovereignty, authority, and global governance. Focusing on partnerships in the United Nations context, this paper examines the private environmental governance institutions in their historical economic context. (shrink)

In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this (...) three-tier framework. While the two-first requisites are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots. (shrink)

As crucial elements of green ideology, political participation and inclusiveness have become indispensable to democratic decision-making as green values gained ground across the world. It is often assumed that through the inclusion and participation of more stakeholders, the global environmental governance architecture has become increasingly democratic since the 1990s. This article asks whether civil society participation in the relevant United Nations platforms democratises transnational and global environmental governance, or simply simulates democratic participation without giving (...) stakeholders the chance to contribute to policy decisions. First, building on Hannah Arendt's concept of political action I differentiate forms of participation based on different value systems. Then, following the historical development of participation narratives in the United Nations, I argue that participation has become increasingly instrumentalised and used to conceal other types of institutional change based on efficiency considerations and neoliberal values. (shrink)

This work examines Japanese government policies that impact on the environment in order to determine whether they incorporate a sufficient ethical substance. In the enquiry into the ethics of the policies, Kagawa-Fox explores how Western philosophers combined their theories to develop a 'Western environmental ethics code'; she also reveals the existence of a unique 'Japanese environmental ethics code' built on Japan's cultural traditions, religious practices, and empirical experiences. The discovery of the distinctive Japanese code is not only important (...) for what it discloses as a new philosophy, but most importantly how it can be used to analyse the ethical framework of the Japanese policies. In spite of the positive contributions that Japan has shown towards the global environment, the government has failed to show a corresponding moral obligation to the world ecology in its global environmental policy. The policies examined in the three case studies comprising whaling, nuclear energy, and forestry, have also been found wanting in ecological ethical considerations, both from a Western and Japanese perspective. The main reason for this is that the integrity of the policies has been compromised by Japanese vested interest groups; business and political interests ensure that the policies are primarily focused on maintaining sustainable economic growth. Whilst Japan's global environmental policy initiatives are the key to its economic survival into the 21st century, and these initiatives may achieve their aim, they do however fail the Japanese code of environmental ethics."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Public or stakeholder participation in environmental governance has been strongly advocated within the United Nations (UN) since the early 1990s. A relatively new mechanism for global climate finance that emphasises stakeholder engagement is the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a UN strategy for channelling funds from the Global North to the Global South. Drawing on previous critical approaches to multi-stakeholder involvement in global governance, this article explores stakeholder involvement within the GCF. The study combines (...) ideas from institutional logics and resource dependency to provide a better understanding of how stakeholder arrangements are shaped in climate organisations. Results show that the GCF stakeholder arrangement favours private sector stakeholders – stakeholders that take a technical and apolitical approach to climate finance – and disfavours smaller, less resourceful stakeholders as well as those who perform a politicised watchdog function. (shrink)

The timing of the Japanese Government's acceptance of the United Nations multilateral treaties governing several environmental concerns indicates Japan's priorities: biodiversity, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer. Banning transboundary movement of hazardous wastes is the least prioritized, as indicated by Japan's failure to accept the Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention. The Japanese Environment Agency's policy statements and budget allocations between 1985 and 2000, as well as other official statements and programs, likewise indicate the same priorities. (...) Moreover, of the three priorities, global warming is the top. (shrink)

The rise of multi-stakeholder institutions (MIs) involving the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry has raised concerns among food and public health scholars, especially with regards to enhancing the legitimacy and influence of transnational food corporations in global food governance (GFG) spaces. However, few studies have investigated the governance composition and characteristics of MIs involving the UPF industry, nor considered the implications for organizing global responses to UPFs and other major food systems challenges. We address this gap by (...) conducting a network analysis to map global MIs involving the UPF industry, drawing data from web sources, company reports, business and market research databases, and academic and grey literature. We identified 45 such global food system MIs. Of these, executives from the UPF industry or affiliated interest groups held almost half (_n_ = 263, or 43.8%) of the total 601 board seat positions. Executives from a small number of corporations, especially Unilever (_n_ = 20), Nestlé (_n_ = 17), PepsiCo Inc (_n_ = 14), and The Coca-Cola Company (_n_ = 13) held the most board seat positions, indicating centrality to the network. Board seats of these MIs are dominated by executives from transnational corporations (_n_ = 431, or 71.7%), high-income countries (_n_ = 495, or 82.4%), and four countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) (_n_ = 350, or 58.2%) in particular. This study shows that MIs involving the UPF industry privilege the interests of corporations located near exclusively in the Global North, draw legitimacy through affiliations with multi-lateral agencies, civil society groups and research institutions, and represent diverse corporate interests involved in UPF supply chains. Corporate-anchored multi-stakeholderism, as a form of GFG governance, raises challenges for achieving food systems transformation, including the control and reduction of UPFs in human diets. (shrink)

The continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies. Although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights, environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain. This paper focuses on the role and performance of Apple Inc (...) in the global value chain in Asia. Apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing Apple components. This analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected. (shrink)

Consecutive constructivism is a moral and political theory which mitigates structural injustice by securing individuals' perception of private morality--that is, inventing procedural devices to make people enhance their moral consciousness--and, at the same time, encourages people to voluntarily concern themselves with procedural justice and public morality. The crucial reason for this position is that a detouring method of not directly dealing with the problem of justice but rather discussing the problem of morals is required to avoid the lucid criticisms of (...) statists that the sovereign ruling states with authority or the world government does not exist. This book suggests a new approach to the problem of global justice, termed here consecutive constructivism. It provides a way of coping with procedural justice at the global level, while also alleviating the problem of structural injustice insofar as it exacerbates procedural injustice. Acknowledging the fact that the discussion of global justice is difficult in a world constituted of lots of sovereign states, it sketches out a political theory which begins with the problem of morals and then consecutively moves on to the matter of justice. The result is a novel normative theory narrowing the gap between Neo-Westphalian and Post-Westphalian traditions. (shrink)

Environmental Law, Ethics and Governance draws attention to the necessity for inter-disciplinarity in research focused on achieving good environmental governance, be it of a physical area, an environmental problem or a natural resource. Law and ethics each have an important role to play in this regard and the chapters in this volume consider these issues from a number of different perspectives. Included in this book is the academic research and professional experiences of a diversity of (...) authors, including those engaged in research into substantive governance issues, which arise at all levels from the global to the local. The case studies explored in this book provide excellent examples from across this range. In addition, contributions are included from those involved in process and procedural matters, including the complex issues of how new law ought to be drafted, the implementation of that law and environmental legal education. This volume is both thought provoking and instructive and aims to inspire further research regarding the ethical dimensions of environmental law and legal governance. It is clear that these topics remain of great significance if law and policy is to be effective and therefore this volume is a valuable and timely contribution to the discourse in this area. (shrink)

Abstract Environmental and public health-focused sciences are increasingly characterised as constituting an emerging discipline—planetary medicine. From a governance perspective, the ethical components of that discipline may usefully be viewed as bestowing upon our ailing natural environment the symbolic moral status of a patient. Such components emphasise, for example, the origins and content of professional and social virtues and related ethical principles needed to promote global governance systems and policies that reduce ecological stresses and pathologies derived from (...) human overpopulation, selfishness and greed—such as pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as provide necessary energy, water and food security. Less well explored in this context, however, is the ethics that should underpin global use of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology as forms of planetary therapeutics. Nanotechnology may be particularly important, for instance, as a mechanism for improving upon photosynthesis and engineering it into human structures for localised production of carbon-neutral hydrogen based-fuel and carbohydrate-based food and fertilizer. Artificial photosynthesis, because of its unique and widespread public and environmental benefits in this period of human history, may even be termed the moral culmination of nanotechnology, assisting this planet to move beyond the Anthropocene epoch to that of the Sustainocene. This paper explores practical steps towards planetary nanomedicine involving governance of artificial photosynthesis, including a UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Bioethics and Human Rights of Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis (Global Solar Fuels and Foods ). Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s11569-012-0144-4 Authors Thomas Faunce, College of Medicine, Biology and the Environment and College of Law (joint Appointment), Australian National University, Acton, Australia Journal NanoEthics Online ISSN 1871-4765 Print ISSN 1871-4757. (shrink)

The theory of boundary organizations was developed to address an important group of institutions in American society neglected by scholarship in science studies and political science. The long-term stability of scientific and political institutions in the United States has enabled a new class of institutions to grow and thrive as mediators between the two. As originally developed, this structural feature of these new institutions—that is, their location on the boundary between science and politics—dominated theoretical frame-works for explaining their behavior. Applying (...) the theory of boundary organizations to international society requires a refocusing of some of the theory’s central features, however. In this article, I introduce a new framework—hybrid management—to explain the activities of boundary organizations in the more complex, contingent, and contested settings of global politics. I develop the framework of hybrid management using the specific example of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice. (shrink)

Indigenous environmental movements have been important actors in twentieth- and twenty-first-century global environmental politics and environmental justice. Their explicit foci range from the protection of indigenous environmental stewardship systems to upholding and expanding treaty responsibilities to securing indigenous rights in law and policy. This chapter suggests that these movements open important intellectual spaces for thinking about the function of environmental governance institutions in addressing complex environmental issues such as clean water and forest (...) conservation. Different from institutional functions based on market mechanisms or appeals to human psychological tendencies, a variety of indigenous environmentalists suggest that institutions should function to convene reciprocal responsibilities across relatives as diverse as humans, non-human beings such as plants, entities such as water, and collectives such as forests. (shrink)

Stewardship—the caring for fellow human beings as well as the nonhuman world—is receiving increasing attention from scholars in the field of global environmental change. Recent publications underscore that stewardship is becoming a key norm within the global international system of states, but that in remaining state-centric, stewardship fails to create a deeper systemic transformation of the international system’s normative structure. In this article, we examine whether stewardship also underpins hybrid governance arrangements, which are a combination of (...) public requirements and private standards, with a specific emphasis on certification. We argue that a stewardship ethos requires citizenship, compassion and sufficiency. We, thus, contribute to the burgeoning literature on certification by focusing on normative principles that are fundamental for sustainability governance, but have so far been neglected in governance research. Empirically, we are able to reveal broader implications of the normative transformations underway in global sustainability governance. To add depth to our analysis, we concentrate on palm oil, an agricultural commodity, which serves for food purposes and as a substitute for fossil fuels to mitigate global warming. Palm oil is representative of the interlinkages between social and environmental objectives, which are at the core of the notion of stewardship as conceptualized in this article. We find that stewardship underpins hybrid governance arrangements but momentarily it is realized only in niches. We argue that in order to move to a state of global stewardship, we need a bolder public policy agenda which respects environmental limits, acknowledges boundaries for the global poor, and allows for the expression of emotions in public dialogue. (shrink)

Global Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience, Oran R. Young (ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, 344 pp., paper, $22.50, ISBN 0?262?74020?6 The Implementation and Effectiveness of International Environmental Commitments: Theory and Practice, David G. Victor, Kal Raustiala and Eugene B. Skolnikoff (eds). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998, 686 pp., paper, $27.50, ISBN 0?262?72028?0.

This article describes and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity principle” as a guiding ethical value in forestry governance. Different trends in environmental management such as local participation, decentralization or global governance have emerged in the last two decades at the global, national and local level. This article suggests that the conscious or unconscious application of subsidiarity has been the ruling principle that has allocated the level at which tasks have been assigned to different agents. Based (...) on this hypothesis this paper describes the principle of subsidiarity and its application to environmental policies within forest governance and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity” principle as a critical conceptual tool for sustainable resource management. The paper explains as an example how “environmental subsidiarity” is the key principle that can link payment for ecosystem services (PES) with environmental public policies and applies this principle with all its political consequences to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) architecture. It concludes by showing how the adoption of “environmental subsidiarity” as a ethical principle could help to maximize benefits to all stakeholders involved in PES schemes such as REDD+. (shrink)

Contemporary global politics is characterized by an increasing trend toward experimental forms of governance, with an emphasis on private governance. A plurality of private standards, codes of conduct and quality assurance schemes currently developed particularly, though not exclusively, by TNCs replace traditional intergovernmental regimes in addressing profound global environmental and socio-economic challenges ranging from forest deforestation, fisheries depletion, climate change, to labor and human rights concerns. While this trend has produced a heated debate in science (...) and politics, surprisingly little attention has been paid on the effects of private governance on questions of distribution and justice. This is highly problematic. At the beginning of the twenty-first century global inequalities are greater than ever before, while rapid economic, social, political, and environmental changes threaten to further derail sustainable development and humanitarian objectives. If private governance creates or intensifies some of the pressing global inequalities (e.g., food security), and alleviates others (e.g., environmental degradation), from a business ethics perspective, we need to know which aspects need to be strengthened and where appropriate interventions are necessary and desirable. This paper proposes a framework to examine and classify the distributive outcomes of private governance institutions through the lenses of one particular approach to distributive justice, the capability approach. Empirically, it focuses on agrifood one area where the controversy regarding the distributive concerns of private governance are particularly pronounced. (shrink)

The primary responsibility for global climate change responsiveness is usually attributed to nation states. This is reflected in the United Nations’ processes aimed at enrolling governments in mitigation and adaptation programmes. Such an approach begs the question of how global climate change (GCC) responsiveness might proceed if a national government is hostile to the issue, as appears likely to be the case in the USA. This paper addresses this concern by documenting the percentage of the population of the (...) USA who are ‘covered’ by at least one of six examples of GCC responsiveness at sub-federal – state and municipality – levels. Of the population of the USA, 25.8% lives in states where all of the state-level initiatives surveyed are in effect, whereas only 4.4% are not covered by any of the six. This coverage has increased as compared to earlier surveys (Lutsey, N., and D. Sperling. 2008. “America’s Bottom-Up Climate Change Mitigation Policy.” Energy Policy 36: 673–685. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2007.10.018). This finding suggests that there is more practical hope for GCC responsiveness than might be commonly appreciated and this also has ramifications for research in accounting. (shrink)

Global Governance Futures addresses the crucial importance of thinking through the future of global governance arrangements. It considers the prospects for the governance of world order approaching the middle of the twenty-first century by exploring today's most pressing and enduring health, social, ecological, economic, and political challenges. Each of the expert contributors considers the drivers of continuity and change within systems of governance and how actors, agents, mechanisms, and resources are and could be mobilized. (...) The aim is not merely to understand state, intergovernmental, and non-state actors. It is also to draw attention to those underappreciated aspects of global governance that push understanding beyond strictures of traditional conceptualizations, and that offer better insights into the future of world order. Three sections enable readers to appreciate better the sum of forces likely to shape world order in the near and not-so-near future: "Planetary," changes wrought by continuing human domination of the Earth and by war; current and future geopolitical, civilizational, and regional contestations; and life in and between urban and non-urban environments. "Divides," including threats to human rights gains; the plight of migrants; those who have and those who do not; persistent racial, gender, religious, and sexual-orientation-based discrimination; and those who govern and those who are governed. "Challenges," of food and health insecurities; ongoing environmental degradation and species loss; the current and future politics of international assistance and data; and the wrong turns taken in the control of illicit drugs and crime. Designed to engage advanced undergraduate and graduate students in international relations, organization, law, and political economy as well as the general reader, this book invites readers to adopt both a backward- and forward-looking view of global governance. It will spark discussion and debate as to how dystopic futures might be avoided and change agents mobilized. (shrink)

Globalization has increased the economic power of the multinational corporation (MNC), engendering calls for greater corporate social responsibility (CSR) from these companies. However, the current mechanisms of global governance are inadequate to codify and enforce recognized CSR standards. One method by which companies can impact positively on global governance is through the mechanism of Global Public Policy Networks (GPPN). These networks build on the individual strength of MNCs, domestic governments, and non-governmental organizations to create expected (...) standards of behaviour in such areas as labour rights, environmental standards, and working conditions. This article models GPPN in the issue area of CSR. The potential benefits of GPPN include better overall coordination among industry and government in establishing what social expectations the modern MNC will be expected to fill. (shrink)

With the proliferation of private standards many significant decisions regarding public health risks, food safety, and environmental impacts are increasingly taking place in the backstage of the global agro-food system. Using an analytical framework grounded in political economy, we explain the rise of private standards and specific actors – notably supermarkets – in the restructuring of agro-food networks. We argue that the global, political-economic, capitalist transformation – globalization – is a transition from a Fordist regime to a (...) regime of flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1989). We also argue that the standard making process of this new regulatory regime is increasingly moving from the front stage – where it is open to public debate and democratic decision-making bodies – to the backstage – where it is dominated by large supermarket procurement offices. We assert that transnational supermarket chains are increasingly controlling what food is grown where, how, and by whom. We also contend that the decision-making processes of transnational supermarket chains are typically “black-boxed.” The Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group (EUREP) is presented as a case of private governance by transnational supermarket chains. We conclude by examining the limitations and long-term efficacy of a system of private governance in the global agro-food system. (shrink)

As global history continues to take shape as an important field of research, its interactive relationships with the history of science, technology, and medicine are recognized and being investigated as significant areas of concern. Strangely, despite the fact that it is key to understanding so many of the subjects that are central to global history and would itself benefit from a broader geographical perspective, the history of chemistry has largely been left out of this process – particularly for (...) the modern historical period. This article argues for the value of integrating the history of chemistry with global history, not only for understanding the past, but also for thinking about our shared present and future. Toward this end, it (1) explores the various ways in which ‘chemistry’ has and can be defined, with special attention to discussions of ‘indigenous knowledge systems’; (2) examines the benefits of organizing historical inquiry around the evolving sociomaterial identities of substances; (3) considers ways in which the concepts of ‘chemical governance’ and ‘chemical expertise’ can be expanded to match the complexities of global history, especially in relation to environmental issues, climate change, and pollution; and (4) seeks to sketch the various geographies entailed in bringing the history of chemistry together with global histories. (shrink)

This paper explores preferences and attitudes related to fiscal federalism held by the ASEAN people in the context of environmental issues. Fiscal federalism would predict that local environmental problems will be handled more efficiently by local governments, while national environmental problems will be solved more efficiently by the national government. But it is not obvious whether citizens consider in the same way as economics theory predicts. To unveil this point, I address questions of whether those who have (...) higher consciousness toward environmental issues at the neighbor or local level prefer local governments to decide environment policies, whether those who have more consciousness about environmental issues at the national level prefer the national government to decide the policies, and whether those who have higher consciousness toward environmental problems at global level prefer higher levels government such as the United Nations to decide the policies. By fitting multi-level probit regressions to cross-national survey data collected in ASEAN countries, I found the results supporting the hypotheses. The country analyses show the results which support the hypotheses in Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines. (shrink)

Global health and environmental wellbeing are mutually reinforcing and interdependent. This mutuality invokes two major analytical orientations: it emphasizes a direct nexus between ecological strategies and global health outcomes. These in turn revitalize the essential quest for comprehensive policies and responsible strategies for enhancing both ecology and health within the discourse of sustainability. With orientation towards political conception of corporate responsibility, I problematize the root questions of the democratic embeddedness of the firm under conditions of weakened institutional (...) structures. I highlight the inherent power relations in global health and ecological governance through literature mapping. I address the question: Why and how might ecological strategies be embedded in corporate day-to-day actions to produce optimal outcomes that have positive effects on global health and human dignity? Besides resource and ethical/political constraints, there are several micro-political, geopolitical, industrial, institutional and structural impediments to ecological and health sustainability. This grim diagnosis is clearly a description of a ‘disturbingly fascinating’ pathology of global capitalism whose industrial effects culminate in the accumulation of more profits for a few at the expense of the ecological sustainability of the majority. That notwithstanding, there are several grounds for optimism with a move from anthropocentrism to humanistic eco-centrism via deliberative democratic procedures. Here, the centrality of human dignity is emphasized. This study provides an interdisciplinary theoretical model that seeks to reorient strategies towards restoration, protection, mitigation, adaptation, harm avoidance and innovative sustainability of the whole economic gamut and biodiversity that supports global health. Thus, I rearticulate ecological sustainability in terms of its most fundamental means and end: sustainable global health and the tutelage of human dignity. (shrink)

This study was conducted with the aim of outlining a comprehensive picture of the coverage of various sustainability schemes or criteria sets related to the entire value-added chain of biomass and bioenergy and comparing them accordingly. Eight sustainability schemes and one draft directive were chosen for the qualitative comparison: two existing sets of criteria for agricultural biomass (RSPO, RTRS); two existing forest certification schemes (FSC, Finnish FFCS); two newly developed initiatives for biomass for energy raw material (WWF Meta standard, CSB); (...) and three recent proposals for bio energy and biofuels (SSB, Finnish SLF, EU draft directive).The analysis demonstrated that five schemes (RSPO, RTRS, FSC, CSB and SSB) are created for global application and commonly cover all sustainability issues plus the legal framework around it. The WWF Meta standard does also cover all issues, although the economic items are underemphasised. The two Finnish sets (FFCS and SLF) are mainly locally or regionally applied and focus more on environmental issues, as other issues are covered by existing legislation. The EU draft directive focuses mainly on the governance of energy from renewable sources at the European level, emphasising environmental issues. This paper resulted in the proposal of a tri-dimensional approach (sustainability issues; technical biomass conversion routes; physical trade flows) when comparing various biomass and bioenergy schemes and for further development and empirical testing of overall European biomass and bioenergy sustainability. (shrink)

Worsening energy crises and the growing effects of climate change have spurred, among other things, concerted efforts to tackle global problems through what the United Nations calls Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are in turn argued to be best achieved via the adoption of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as the vehicle for guiding our efforts. However, though these things are often presented as the solution to global issues, they are increasingly being used as a (...) means to centralize power and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. This article aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG mask this reality, taking as a solution one of the foundational causes of global wealth and power disparity. (shrink)

Through case studies on biodiversity, deforestation, pollution, and war, among others, Stoett analyzes the ability of international policy to provide environmental protection and discusses the ever-present factors of equality, sovereignty, and human rights integral to these issues. While providing a panoramic view of the actors and structures producing these policies. Stoett reminds readers that the topic is personal, that effective governance is not solely the responsibility of governments but of individuals and communities as well. Environmental diplomacy may (...) not always meet its intended goals, but positive steps are being achieved, and change can only happen when angst is replaced with an educated determination to work toward environmental justice. The Second Edition will explore new events, issues, and agreements since 2011; notably the Paris Agreement. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a new theme added throughout and highlighted in each case study. (shrink)

This paper examines the recent rise of initiatives for responsible agricultural investment and provides a preliminary assessment of their likely success in curbing the ecological and social costs associated with the growth in private financial investment in the sector over the past decade. I argue that voluntary responsible investment initiatives for agriculture are likely to face similar weaknesses to those experienced in responsible investment initiatives more generally. These include vague and difficult to enforce guidelines, low participation rates, an uneven business (...) case, and confusion arising from multiple and competing initiatives. In addition, the large diversity of investors and high degree of complexity of financial investments further complicate efforts to discern who bears the burden of responsibility in practice. As a result, there is a strong likelihood that voluntary governance initiatives for responsible agricultural investment will shift discourse more than they will change practice. (shrink)

This book considers traditional public economy theory of public goods provision as oversimplified, because it is state centered and fiscally focused.

The concept of environmental, social and governance (ESG) is rapidly emerging as the new global industry standard and an important benchmarking tool for socially responsible investments. Major corporations seek the expertise of specialized consultants to develop and implement tailored ESG framework for their businesses. This book offers a guide to ESG and its practical applications. Beyond introducing the structured procedures of the most common ESG approaches, it delves into the comprehensive impact on the value chain, providing practical (...) insights. The text explores the latest trends in various business sectors, offering insights into their ESG practices. Closing with a forward-looking perspective, the book anticipates future developments such as climate change management and ESG certifications, while also addressing potential pitfalls encapsulated by the term “greenwashing”. Written by authors with a solid background in teaching and research, the book establishes a robust theoretical foundation. The inclusion of numerous practical examples and country-specific recommendations enhances this book’s applicability and makes it an invaluable resource to those navigating the complexities of ESG. (shrink)

Many transnational corporations and international organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility to address criticisms of working and environmental conditions at subcontractors' factories. While CSR 'codes of conduct' are easy to draft, supplier compliance has been elusive. Even third-party monitoring has proven an incomplete solution. This article proposes that an alteration in the supply chain's governance, from an arms-length market model to a collaborative partnership, often will be necessary to effectuate CSR. The market model forces contractors to focus on (...) price and delivery as they compete for the lead firm's business, rendering CSR observance secondary, at best. A collaborative partnership where the lead firm gives select suppliers secure product orders and other benefits removes disincentives and adds incentives for CSR compliance. In time, the suppliers' CSR habit should shift their business philosophy toward pursuing CSR as an end in itself, regardless of buyer incentives and monitoring. This article examines these hypotheses in the context of the athletic footwear sector with Nike, Inc. and its suppliers as the specific case study. The data collected and conclusions reached offer strategies for advancing CSR beyond the superficial and often ineffectual 'code of conduct' stage. (shrink)

Non-governmental organisations have been playing a significant role in the formation and implementation of global climate change policies. The incremental participation of non-governmental organisations in climate change negotiations is significant for two reasons: 1) they provide governments with expertise and information; and 2) they help to bridge the lack of democracy and legitimacy in global environmental governance. The fulfilment of these two functions, however, is surrounded by doubts, as very little progress has been made so far (...) in combating climate change. Many non-governmental organisations themselves lack democratic legitimacy in their formation and structures, and international climate change agreements are often fragile, not because the negotiators lack information but because they lack political will. This paper examines and outlines the areas for identifying how non-governmental organisations could contribute more to produce effective climate policies, in order to mitigate and manage climate change in the absence of more democratic international climate-change policy-making processes. (shrink)

Globalisation involves both promising potentials and risks. It has the potential – through the spread of human rights, the migration of people and ideas, and the integration of diverse economies – to improve human wellbeing and enhance the protection of human rights worldwide. But globalisation also incurs risks: global environmental risks (such as global warming), the creation of new centres of power with limited legitimacy, a ‘race to the bottom’ regarding workers’ safety and rights, risky journeys of (...) thousands of migrants and not least growing global inequalities. Globalisation, therefore, is a key factor for today’s discussions of justice. -/- As globalisation connects people, it also raises associated responsibilities between them. Until recently, the interest in justice among political philosophers and social ethicists was mainly focused on the nation state. However, this is no longer feasible. Since economic globalisation affects how wealth and power are distributed globally it has become indispensable to discuss social ethics in a global context and to develop principles of global justice. Global justice, therefore, entails an assessment of the benefits and burdens of the structural relations and institutional arrangements that constitute and govern globalisation. -/- The academic discussion of global justice is vibrant and expanding. In my introduction I provide an overview of the discussions on global poverty, justice, cosmopolitanism and statism, migration, the capability approach and different dimensions of global justice. (shrink)

Employing the case of theredwood Headwaters forest in rural NorthernCalifornia, this paper investigates the extentto which an anti-corporate progressive alliancebetween labor and the environmental movement ispossible in contemporary global capitalism.Progressive alliances between labor and theenvironmental movement have been historicallydifficult. This has been particularly the casein the timber industry, where companies havebeen able to mobilize workers againstenvironmentalists' designs. The caseillustrates the events that led to the purchaseof the Headwaters Forest by the state ofCalifornia and the Federal Government fromPacific Lumber. (...) This is a subsidiary of Maxxam,a corporation with interests in a variety ofeconomic sectors. The objective was to haltMaxxam's rampant deforestation of old growthredwood. Though conflict between labor andenvironmentalists existed, the casedemonstrates that the labor and theenvironmental movement were united againstMaxxam. They, however, were not completelysuccessful in their struggle as Maxxam greatlybenefited from the state-sponsored landpurchase. Maxxam gained economically, was ableto shape the ideological framework throughwhich the purchasing agreement was achieved,and extended its hegemony over the state. Thisoutcome cast doubts on the possibility thatcurrent forms of environmental protection couldtranscend commodified and reductionistpostures. Simultaneously, the existence of acommon anti-corporate consciousness among largesegments of labor and the environmentalmovement makes the environment a contestedterrain and allows for some optimism about thefuture of the struggle for ecologically soundsocial arrangements. (shrink)

BackgroundTo prevent the planet from catastrophic global warming a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to net zero is required. Thus, divestment from fossil fuels must be a strategic interest for health insurers. The aim of this study was to analyse the implementation of environmental, social and governance criteria in German private health insurers’ investments.MethodsIn 2019 a survey about ESG strategies was sent to German private health insurance companies. The survey evaluated investment strategies and thresholds for the exclusion (...) of sectors and business practices, as well as company strategies for sustainable business development.FindingsGiven their business reports, German private health insurers manage assets of more than €350 billion. 11 of 40 insurance companies provided quantitative data, 10 refused to answer. According to quantitative data, €66 billion of assets is managed according to any ESG criteria; this equals an average of 76% of each company’s bonds. None of these insurers excluded the production and sale of fossil fuels. All excluded coal mining but only at high thresholds. For €226 billion, no data were provided.InterpretationThe findings are in contrast to the expected intrinsic economic interest of the insurers to stop global warming and improve public health. The majority of assets are managed in a highly problematic manner, especially the absence of capital allocated in fields contrary to medical ethics cannot be presumed. Lack of transparency is a major problem that limits clients in choosing the insurer who has the most advanced ESG criteria. (shrink)

Waste is a major global environmental issue that assembles socio-cultural and bio-geological processes in complex indeterminate relationships. Drawing on three case studies, this article explores the shifting environmental politics concerned with waste’s material, economic, political, and cultural ‘management’. The Canadian case studies – determining a new waste management technology in a mid-sized city in central Ontario, an open dump in a remote Nunavut community, and an abandoned gold mine in the Northwest Territories – suggest waste occasions particular (...) material and political mobilizations. Landfill leachate, colonialism, disinterested publics, freezing arsenic, global corporate investments, country food, land claims, neoliberal governance, permafrost, ravens, and a host of other socio-material forces both empower and thwart ‘management’ politics. Through these case studies, this article explores Isabelle Stengers’s assertion that participating citizenship is an ‘Empty Great Idea’, and a provocation to consider the contexts in which waste may generate acquiescent or objecting publics. (shrink)

Drawing on the recognition that questions of discourse and power are vital components in analysing the public participation in environmental governance, this paper examines the ways in which dominant scientific discourses about the Earth's climate inform the types of public talk facilitated in and by mini-publics, particularly when they are ‘scaled up’ to address environmental issues such as climate change. World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) serves as a case study. Conceived and organised by the (...) Danish Board of Technology, WWViews was a historically unprecedented public forum in which participants, invited from a range of nations, were given the opportunity to deliberate on key themes addressed in the negotiations taking place during the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP 15). The overarching purpose of this analysis is to invite reflection on the practices and assumptions that serve to make up publics in relation to issues that have been framed, predominantly, as scientific, universal and global. (shrink)

The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action was adopted at the 2011 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in South Africa and one of the key achievements of the 2011 UN Conference was the agreement on and the launch of the Green Climate Fund. As the international community prepares for the 2012 UNFCC talks to start in Qatar in November-December 2012, the past history of global environmental and climate change financing issues as well as the role (...) of finance and investment in addressing global climate change will be examined in this article using the Green Climate Fund as a case study. While it is hard to be optimistic about the current international geo-political context and the policy success of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, the Green Climate Fund does represent a real opportunity to move forward on global climate governance and bring real economic and technological dividends to the developing world. (shrink)

Environmental problems were not among the core issues for the United Nations at its creation in 1945. In the 1970s, however, they created a crescendo of public concern as the threats posed by toxic chemicals, large-scale destruction of natural ecosystems, and the loss of species became visible and were obviously linked to human activity. Pollution, it was clear, did not stop at national borders and solutions required common effort. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at (...) Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay explores how, as the only institution equipped to identify global problems and generate collective action toward their resolution, the UN became the platform for creating multilateral environmental agreements, convening global conferences, and mobilizing national and international effort through a progressively larger number of institutions at the national and international level to guide decisions and influence behavior. We have moved the environmental needle in terms of information, institutions, and awareness. Yet, many environmental problems persist, some are getting worse, and new challenges and, indeed, crises are emerging. (shrink)